From the Archives: July 18, 2010

Some people think ‘game’ is new, but is it?

Have a look at the contents of a men’s magazine from 1939.

Good, now have a look at the index..

Read this article. Click on the pictures to view them at full size (might also have to use the + icon on your cursor after the click-through).

A few extracts from the page

A psychologist examines the strange mental quirks behind ruthlessness in love. Just how much she can get away with. Paradoxically, the less she succeeds. the harder she tries; and yet if she really succeeds, she loses all interest in the man who has been proved a weakling. Naturally, different girls have ideas of what constitutes a strong man, but few of them have entireìy the feeling that sheer physical superiority demonstrable by force if necessary lies at the bottom of it. And while the law does not permit this superiority to take the form of violence, as it once did (the old common law allowed a rnan to beat his wife provided he used a stick “no bigger than his thumb“), there are few women for whom the idea of violence does not have at least a little fascination.

John Barrymore has his foibles, and there are four women, anyhow the four wives who have sued him for dlvorce who have sworn that he is pretty hard to live with. But so far as making a hit with the fair sex goes, not many men can match his record. And John never has made any secret of his readiness to “treat ’em rough,” when necessary.

“Jimmy” Cagney is another actor who found women are thrilled by rough treatment-it was a scene in which he threw a grapefruit at his wife at the breakfast table that made him the idol of the feminine movie-goers, and inaugurated a new screen fashion. Though ín fact, the fashion was not so new as they called it: before Cagney there was the original “Sheik,” Rudolph Valentino, Whose subtly sadistic role, though
acted by a man, was the creation of a woman author and reñected the innermost yearnings of millions of feminine hearts.

here is the rest of it.

In particular. the average child‘s impression of adult love-making is that it is an attack upon the female, in which the male is both ruthless, and apparently furious. Thus a girl-without the least idea why may feel after she has grown up that a man who “gets rough” or loses his temper is not quite a man. Most girls, of course, would deny any such feeling, but the fascination of the Caveman for most members of their sex proves its existence beyond question.

Some months ago I discussed the dangers of hypnotism with a world-famous psychiatrist, and he pointed out one danger which must people never thought of. “It is quite true,” he agreed “even in the hypnotic trance a person will do nothing that is contrary to his essential nature, but, at least in her unconscious the average woman has a wish to be ravished- which an unprincipled man could take advantage of.” And while in most women this wish is so deeply buried that they never know it exists, it often reveals its presence by the craving to be “mastered”-by violence, if necessary-by the man whom they love.

On the whole, then, while a lot of wives would probably be happier if their husbands gave them an occasional spanking, a psychologist can hardly recommend the practice. Except in the course of something like a psychoanalysis, the primitive feelings of both men and women are best left in the dark corners of the mind in which civilized life has confined them . As a modern husband, your best plan is probably to make your wife feel that you would not be afraid to spank her if you felt that she it, but love her too much and are too chivalrous to do it except under provocation. A hint of ruthlessness in love-making is another matter: the man who is too weak or too timid to achieve that will both disappoint his wife and frustrate part of his own manhood.

So, what do you think?